Nine months is not enough! Cilic drugs ban will not deter other cheats in tennis

The doping issue that nags away at professional tennis was thrust to the fore again on Monday when Marin Cilic became the second high-profile player this summer to be found guilty of an offence.

No sooner had Britain’s Davis Cup team landed back home after beating Croatia than they discovered their opponents’ leading player has been suspended for nine months.

Former world No 9 Marin Cilic, absent in the weekend’s 3-1 defeat, has joined Serbia’s Viktor Troicki in being forced to take an enforced break from the game.

Banned: Marin Cilic has been suspended for nine months after testing positive for a banned stimulant

While Troicki did not test positive but was banned for 18 months for declining to undergo a blood test, Cilic was given a suspension of just half that after being found to have ingested the banned stimulant Nikethamide.

An independent legal-style International Tennis Federation panel sitting in London again took a lenient view, accepting that the 24-year-old former Australian Open semi-finalist accidentally took it as part of a glucose supplement.

The ban has been generously backdated to the beginning of May — when the test took place at the ATP Munich Open — meaning that he will be able to compete again from the start of next February.

The Cilic affair has been a particular embarrassment to the sport because news of the positive findings leaked out to Croatian media in late July.

The 6ft 5in baseliner had withdrawn from Wimbledon after winning his first round with what he claimed was a knee injury, only for the truth to be revealed within a few weeks.

Withdrawal: Cilic pulled out of Wimbledon after his first round match, citing a knee injury

The policy of official silence until someone is found guilty has been especially damaging in this case, and increasingly suspicion can now fall on any player who takes a prolonged break from the tour, for what may well be a perfectly innocent reason.

Tennis, a game which these days puts a premium on strength and stamina, already has enough unproven rumour and innuendo around some of its most high-profile performers, and this hardly helps.

And regardless of whether or not Cilic’s test was purely the result of a foolish mistake from a player who is regarded as a decent and intelligent man, this punishment is not going to act as much of a deterrent.

Cilic, who will have to forfeit all earnings and ranking points earned subsequent to the test, last night announced that he would be appealing the ban at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Explaining that he bought the product in a French pharmacy, he insisted: ‘I wish to emphasise that I have never knowingly or deliberately taken any banned substances in my life. I am frustrated that I cannot talk more about the case at this time but I will do so once the legal process is over.’

Beaten: Cilic lost to Andy Murray in the final of the AEGON Championships at Queens Club

Tennis has a long-standing anti-doping policy which is currently in the process of being beefed up to implement a biological passport. Players have been caught every year, but they have tended to be lesser-known ones, again fuelling conspiracy theories.

The increased urgency was largely due to public calls from top players, with Andy Murray and Roger Federer being particularly vocal in the wake of the Lance Armstrong scandal late last year.

Murray recently described the old system as ‘pretty useless’ and last week expressed his frustration at the silence surrounding Cilic’s absence.

In the last week there have been widespread media reports in Spain that former world No 35 Nuria Llagostera Vives tested positive last month in America.

Regardless of that, there is a growing issue for tennis here, and the question remains whether a sport that has plenty of money (see Wimbledon’s huge prize-money increases, for example) is still doing enough to tackle it.